Last night I was listening to a message by our Presidente Felipe Calderón about our current swine flu crisis, he is right in that we have coped well with the problem and have all been responsible in taking precautions to prevent the disease to spread. Since we didn't know how much it could spread, the entire country was put on alert and we have all, in a sense, done our part.

Effective since May 1st and until May 5th, the entire country will be put on hold for activities that aren't of immediate importance, this means no class (schools have been closed since the 28th of April), no mass on sunday as the mexican Archbishop has told the country, football stadiums will be closed to public on the weekend and most Christian Churches (including mine) aren't meeting on Sunday either. People are encouraged to stay home and spend time with their families.

If you aren't familiar with the Mexican school calendar, this 5-day break might come as a shocker but in reality we were all planning on not attending school and government offices were going to be closed for that period of time either way... and not because of the flu pandemic! 

As a Mexican citizen living a couple of thousand miles away from Mexico City, I am unalarmed. We are being responsible, but I am glad to take these couple of days to spend quality time with family and friends, looking forward to not meeting on Sunday and gathering somewhere else to seek each other as a church... even if it means going to the beach and pray there.

I agree that we shouldn't undermine this new influenza outbreak in the light of past references and how many people they have killed but it is my personal opinion that we should not be victims of the media frenzy and fall prey of uninformed apocalyptic fear.

To put things into perspective, let me point out the following: Regular flu still kills more people per day than this new one. Others have suggested that the Mexican "bullet flu" has had more casualties per day than the H1N1 influenza virus. It is my fear that we only react to new things and consider them "crisis" over old things that we have already become accustomed to. Maybe we are too used to seeing extreme poverty, injustice, AIDS, malaria and we feel that we no longer need to urgently do something about it. We are closer than ever to depleting every natural resource this world has given us... but yeah, swine flu needs to be put under control.

For more information about confirmed cases, visit the LA Times and the New York Times.